Friday, November 29, 2013

Mabel is three, gathering pumpkins with her friends, guiding her scooter down the sidewalk, riding the bus with Daddy and matching a pink sweater-sleeve against Mamma's pink tights. Mabel swims, Mabel colors – all preserved on antique Polaroid film (the stock now in use dates back to 2009 – before the child was born – when the manufacturing of Polaroid film ceased).

Thursday, November 28, 2013

Above, installation views of Central Nervous System, a recent show by German photographer Wolfgang Tillmans at Maureen Paley in London. (Tillmans appeared previously on this rolling screen about a year ago here.) Below, a few of the current large-format photos in isolation.

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Franco Moretti's new book from Verso is called The Bourgeois : Between History and Literature. He subjects Victorian fiction to automated analysis, hoping for help with a definition of that commonly-used-but-usually-vague term, bourgeois. Moretti's quantitative methods often feel alien to me, but he deploys them with persuasive energy. The dust jacket reproduces a painting of 1832 (now in the Louvre) by Ingres, his portrait of Louis-François Bertin.

Here is part of Franco Moretti's argument (a lapse - for him - into old-fashioned close reading, without numbers) about Tom Brown's Schooldays –

'Shall I tell him . . . he's sent to school to make himself a good scholar?' wonders Squire Brown, as his son Tom is about to leave for Rubgy. 'Well, but he isn't sent to school for that', he corrects himself: 'Greek particles, or the digamma' are not the point; rather, 'if he'll only turn out a brave, helpful, truth-telling Englishman, and a gentleman, and a Christian, that's all I want'. Brave, sincere, a gentleman, and a Christian; that's what Rugby is for. And its headmaster (the real, not fictional one) agrees: 'what we must look for here', he tells the Older Boys to whom he liked to delegate his authority, 'is, first, religious and moral principle; secondly, gentlemanly conduct; thirdly, intellectual ability'. Thirdly, intellectual ability. 'Rather than have [physical science] the principal thing in my son's mind', he adds, in a less guarded moment, 'I would gladly have him think that the sun went around the earth'.
The sun going round the earth. The schoolboy Tom Brown has more common sense than that; still, when at the end of the novel he is asked what he wants 'to carry away' from Rugby, he realizes that he has no idea; and then: '"I want to be A1 at cricket and football, and all the other games . . . and to please the Doctor; and I want to carry away just as much Latin and Greek as will take me through Oxford respectably."' Sports; then the Doctor's approval; last, and least, learning 'just as much' for another perfunctory educational cycle. On at least one thing, therefore, Squire, Doctor, and Boy are in perfect agreement: knowledge is at the bottom of the educational hierarchy.

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Walter Crane (1845-1915) continued to produce commercial wallpaper designs during the last years of his career (and life) at the beginning of the 20th century. These samples are part of the vast collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

COMRADES OF TIME

"Hesitation with regard to the modern projects mainly has to do with a growing disbelief in their promises. Classical modernity believed in the ability of the future to realize the promises of past and present – even after the death of God, even after the loss of faith in the immortality of the soul. The notion of a permanent art collection says it all: archive, library and museum promised secular permanency, a material infinitude that substituted for the religious promise of resurrection and eternal life. During the period of modernity, the 'body of work' replaced the soul as the potentially immortal part of the Self. . . . But today, this promise of an infinite future holding the results of our work has lost its plausibility. Museums have become the sites of temporary exhibitions rather than spaces for permanent collections. The future is ever newly planned – the permanent change of cultural trends and fashions makes any promise of a stable future for an artwork or a political project improbable."